Esmeralda SantiagoEsmeralda Santiago.com
On her personal Web site, Esmeralda Santiago examines the process of creating a memoir and recounts some of the events that were significant in shaping her life and writing. Links are provided to a biography, available books and media, a mailing list, appearances and screenings.

Interview with Esmeralda Santiago
In October of 1999, The Harvard Book Review talked with Santiago about her experience as a Puerto Rican woman at Harvard, her definition of "home," as well as her writing process and inspirations. A brief biography of Santiago prefaces the interview.

Masterpiece Theatre Book Club: Almost a Woman
The Masterpiece Theatre Book Club gives viewers the opportunity to read and discuss selected books alongside their screen adaptations. Esmeralda Santiago's Almost a Woman is the first Book Club selection for the Fall 2002 season. This site offers a list of thought-provoking discussion questions.

Random House/Vintage Books Reading Group Center
In an introduction to her memoir, Almost a Woman Esmeralda Santiago discusses her feelings about being an expatriate Puerto Rican. Links are provided to pages about Almost a Woman and When I Was Puerto Rican, where questions, discussion topics and synopses enrich the reader's experience of the memoirs.

Voices from the Gaps: Women Writers of Color
Voices from the Gaps is an instructional Web site from the University of Minnesota focusing on the lives and works of North American women writers of color. A critical biography of Santiago, a selected bibliography and related links are included here.

Puerto Rican literature and poetryPuerto Rican Literature in the United States: Stages and Perspectives
A comprehensive look at the place in time occupied by Puerto Rican literature in the United States. Author Juan Flores explores the obstacles that Puerto Rican authors, as a minority voice, have faced. From the Modern Language Association's Association of Departments of English.

The Literature of the Puerto Rican Migration in the United States
This MLA/ADE feature (from 1988) offers an extensive annotated bibliography of works by Puerto Rican writers. Genres included are anthologies, prose fiction, poetry, drama, criticism, journals and Puerto Rican literature dealing with the immigrant experience.

Martin Espada: poetry and the burden of history
An interview with poet and lawyer Martin Espada. The judges who awarded his collection Rebellion is the Circle of a Lover's Hands the first PEN/Revson Foundation Fellowship commented, "The greatness of Espada's art, like all great arts, is that it gives dignity to the insulted and the injured of the earth." Espada's method of infusing poems with historical facts can be attributed to the strong sense of responsibility he feels for his homeland. This feature is from the Face and Place of Poetry, one of The Christian Science Monitor Online's Special Projects."

Judith Ortiz Cofer
Ortiz Cofer's personal Web site includes a biography and links to selected reviews, articles and interviews with the author/poet/professor.

Puerto Rico and its historyWelcome to Puerto Rico
A personal site (by Puerto Rican native Magaly Rivera) that, nonetheless, is thorough and well designed. The site provides information about the people, geography, history, economy, government and culture of Puerto Rico, as well as details on each of the country's 78 municipalities. Check out the recipes for a true taste of the island.

WWW-VL History: Puerto Rico
Offers extensive links and research information on geography, language, bibliography, biography, organizations and more relating to Puerto Rico and its history. A History Network site located at the University of Kansas.

Puerto Rico at the Dawn of the Modern Age: 19th- and Early-20th-Century Perspectives
This collection from the Library of Congress portrays the early history of the commonwealth of Puerto Rico through first-person accounts, political writings, maps and histories drawn from the Library's general collection. Among the topics it highlights are the land and its resources, relations with Spain, the competition among political parties, reform efforts and recollections by veterans of the Spanish-American War. The materials in the collection were published between 1831 and 1929.

Puerto Rico
The official country listing for Puerto Rico at the site of the Central Intelligence Agency. Includes detailed information about government, economy, communications, transportation and the military.

Puerto Rico and its history
Argüelles, María del Pilar. Morality and Power: The U.S. Colonial Experience in Puerto Rico from 1898 to 1948. Lanham, MD: University Press of America; [Charlottesville, Va.]: Miller Center, 1996.

Carrión, Arturo Morales. Puerto Rico, a Political and Cultural History. New York NY: W.W. Norton; Nashville: American Association for State and Local History, 1983.

Fernandez, Ronald. The Disenchanted Island: Puerto Rico and the United States in the Twentieth Century. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996.
"Highly recommended as a readable general overview," Library Journal

Flores, Juan. From Bomba to Hip-Hop : Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity. New York NY: Columbia University Press, 2000.